1.2 – Square One

Leela and K9 go undercover at an historic temporal summit where someone is manipulating time and President Romana must discover who.

1 Comment

Styre
on May 8, 2016 at 2:18 AM

GALLIFREY: SQUARE ONE

I’ll come right out and say it: the reason why this review took so long to write is that I couldn’t get through the story. Stephen Cole’s “Square One,” the second episode in Big Finish’s Gallifrey series, managed to put me to sleep no fewer than four times, each time around the same scene. On the fifth attempt, when I finally made it through, it struck me that the play is probably better than its predecessor — it just wasn’t catching my interest at all.

The main problem for me is that the central conflict of the series is monumentally uninteresting. I can see what they’re going for — there’s potential drama to mine in negotiations over temporal powers — but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. To this point, the negotiations have been represented by nothing more than diplomats arguing with each other, and no amount of demonstrative speaking from Lalla Ward or prim irritation from Liason Officer Hossak (Jane Goddard) can make these conversations interesting to me. Yes, it’s interesting that the Monan Host has some more advanced time technology than the Time Lords, but until we actually see it or experience it, it’s just words on a page.

Fortunately, “Square One” does not deal exclusively with negotiations. Cole sets the majority of the play on a synthetic planetoid with unchangeable robots providing all necessary services. There are a number of twists and turns in the plot, some of which are genuinely surprising: one expects the murders and the time distortions to be connected, for example, when in truth they are related only through coincidence. However, the drama is not particularly effective: Hossak appears to be acting merely out of personal obsession, while V’rell’s (Daniel Barzotti) sabotage is related to a revelation about the Time Lords that is too abstract to be shocking. Nonetheless, this is a competent whodunit plot.

What bothered me, though, was the disturbing sexual undercurrent. The delegates are known to enjoy unwinding after a hard day of negotiation, and naturally they prefer to unwind in the company of exotic dancers. Fair enough, but sending Leela undercover as an exotic dancer? Making light of Leela’s naïvete, but then revealing that she’s quite good at it once she figures out what’s going on? Was Cole writing this with one hand on the keyboard? And then we find out that Flinkstab (Daniel Hogarth) is a sadist and sexual pervert who has murdered at least one girl in the throes of passion? I’m not saying this sort of thing isn’t “real Doctor Who,” or anything, but it’s remarkably lurid for an otherwise clinical, dispassionate series, and it jars severely with the rest of the script. This is the sort of thing Terrance Dicks has been rightfully criticized for in his more recent novels.

Overall, “Square One” is a slight improvement over “Weapon of Choice,” but it’s lacking in significance and dramatic effectiveness. Certainly, though, it’s more of a step in the right direction — we’ll see where things go from here.